The Weighty Issue of the Dreadlock

Now, I know there are famine, war, poverty and abuse out there…trust me these issues take up a good proportion of my conscious thought time; but bear with me guys, because lately I have been consumed with the want for having my dreads back and it’s not just because washing arse-length loose hair is driving me insane. Though it is. A little.

So what is it then?

It’s a feeling of reminiscence for those days when it wasn’t this hard. When my life did not involve the mundanities that it does now. It comes from a feeling of wanting to be free again. To escape…it only takes a mildly “rootsy” song to waft through to my lugholes and instantly the longing for the chilled life is back. Of course the lifestyle is mine for the taking – changes recently and plans made to travel with break up the monotony of this Suburbia which I have come to resent again. But the hair? why am I even concerned about the hair?

Back then, in my teens, the dreads meant something to me.

In one respect, they were my silent message to the masses that cried “I am not like you crazy people with your eyelash curlers, hair straighteners and ten denier tights…no. I am more real than that [man]” .

Now agreed, this is a shit silent message as far as messages go. But I rather liked it. And of course contrary to wanting to appear ENTIRELY different to everyone else, I didn’t – suddenly I assimilated easily with other people who held my interest and were like me because I was wearing The Uniform.

We could talk about peace and war and love and the universe and when it was going to end and which band had recently “sold out”…

…and it was magic. I loved being me back then. I knew who I was. I knew what I stood for. It was all so simple. (Particularly as many of my thoughts and viewpoints were regurgitated leftyisms from my fabulous crowd…but I digress and I am shattering the rose tints).

So as I grew up, grew older, the pressure for [a white girl with waist length dreadies] me to change came from all directions, I inevitably swayed in the wind. I changed my hair and vowed to stay true to the thoughts and beliefs that had brought me to lock my hair in the first place.

Life gets messy when you make a big change, particularly when you make many changes at once…it’s a right of passage – the changes can break down all of your definitions about yourself and rebuild you in a whole new way . For me, grey areas became my hiding place, I was not quite one thing, not quite another; I was complex and inccidentaly interesting, not to mention that I could not be easily pigeon holed. I was no longer instantly recognisable as the girl with those views, that listened to those bands. Through this change, of course I was liberated from the censor of many other people yet I was considered to have “sold out” by many of my die hard hippy-type friends. Within myself I recognised that I was still precisely the same person of the day before.

It wasn’t just hair, it never was. It was how I defined myself physically for a long time. I revisited the locks a few times. Naturally curly hair like mine dreads up on it’s own so easily, it was an easy move for me to wave in and out of dreadlockdom. Even now, I have three thick matted locks at the back of my head, whilst the rest wafts around my face, unsure as to which way it should blow.

So why construct the hair again? why limit myself to an aesthetic which I have done to death already?

Because I want to opt out again. I am sick of competing. For attention; for praise; for acceptance.

I never craved one of these whilst I was that free-thinking dread-head of days gone by.

So maybe the beeswax will come out tonight, maybe not; but the thought is there – consuming me still – reminding me of how simple life used to feel.

~ by Femme on May 2, 2008.